Author
Topic: Prayers for a friend (Read 2346 times)

Randy is seriously ill. His symptoms have been rapid breathing, high heart rate, low blood oxygen. He has been treated with massive IV fluids and antibiotics. They put in a central line catheter last night too.

The sepsis is coming from his small intestines. Blood PH is acidic, thus the rapid breathing and rapid heartbeat. Kidney’s are functioning minimally.

A morning CT scan today showed that he has pneumatosis intestinalis, which refers to gas cysts in the bowel wall. This could be from either blocked blood flow or from germs producing air. The docs say that the blocked blood flow is probably not what is happening and is the latter.

Randy is on a ventilator this evening. The plan is to let the machine breath for him. That will allow his body to be sedated, given pain meds and rest from all the rapid breathing. The hope is that the infection (being aggressively treated with antibiotics) can recede and his intestines can heal.

May the Lord have mercy on Randy, alleviate his pain and grant him a speedy and complete recovery!

Lord, have mercy!Lord, have mercy!Lord, have mercy!

Logged

Conquer evil men by your gentle kindness, and make zealous men wonder at your goodness. Put the lover of legality to shame by your compassion. With the afflicted be afflicted in mind. Love all men, but keep distant from all men.—St. Isaac of Syria

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Who can watch the watchmen?"No one is paying attention to your post reports"Why do posters that claim to have me blocked keep sending me pms and responding to my posts? That makes no sense.

Conquer evil men by your gentle kindness, and make zealous men wonder at your goodness. Put the lover of legality to shame by your compassion. With the afflicted be afflicted in mind. Love all men, but keep distant from all men.—St. Isaac of Syria

Randy is still not well. They did some hemodialysis last night which helped out with some of the toxins in his blood.

He will have another CT scan today at 1 PM and the docs will compare with yesterday’s CT to see if the bowel problem can be localized or is more diffuse. If it’s localized that can be a better scenario than more diffuse involvement in determining need for/possibility of surgery.

Randy’s sister, Linda is coming later today/evening.

The docs say that this whole thing doesn’t look good. Randy is very sick.

Conquer evil men by your gentle kindness, and make zealous men wonder at your goodness. Put the lover of legality to shame by your compassion. With the afflicted be afflicted in mind. Love all men, but keep distant from all men.—St. Isaac of Syria

Conquer evil men by your gentle kindness, and make zealous men wonder at your goodness. Put the lover of legality to shame by your compassion. With the afflicted be afflicted in mind. Love all men, but keep distant from all men.—St. Isaac of Syria

Randy had a second CT scan this afternoon. The results are promising.There were no air pockets evident in the intestinal wall in this CT. Thusthe docs tell them that this is no longer a surgical issue to be fixed viasurgery. That is such a relief to hear. Yet they also tell them that Randyis not out of the woods yet. He is still critically ill. The CT did showthat there is still major inflammation in the intestine. They will continueto treat him with lots of antibiotics and fluid. Many of his bodilyindicators are trending to the side of improving, i.e. white blood count isdown from where it was on Monday. He has had a fever today being treatedwith Tylenol and ice packs under arms. One good thing is that he is restingmuch much better than yesterday and last night. The breathing machine isallowing him to rest and allow his body to direct the energy to healing theinflamed intestine.

When Linda arrived this evening he opened his eyes. What a great thing to see!

Randy today was some improved. Heart rate has come down but still remains high and has more reduction to come. Blood pressure is at normal levels but that is being artificially sustained with medication. Breathing is much reduced to normal levels. A fever that he had since Wednesday has come down too. Kidney’s still are completely shut down……no output at all. That remains a major stumbling block in improving his ultimate recovery. Tomorrow they will install a PICC line to alleviate changing other IV lines every 3-4 days. That will make administering medications and fluids easier. Another round of dialysis will happen (maybe tomorrow) when they fell he can tolerate it better.

Randy is VERY heavily sedated. The moments of lucidity are fleeting. He is indeed trending toward improvement , every day. They do feel that he has “turned a corner”. This will be a day by day assessment and his recovery will take a long time. One doctor (who was quite blunt) particularly said today that this will be a very long haul. Additionally the doc said make no mistake, Randy is very very sick. He is still critically ill. He is better than when he came in.

(PS. Is he Orthodox? If so, I will submit his name for commemoration during Divine Liturgy Sunday.)

Logged

Conquer evil men by your gentle kindness, and make zealous men wonder at your goodness. Put the lover of legality to shame by your compassion. With the afflicted be afflicted in mind. Love all men, but keep distant from all men.—St. Isaac of Syria

Friday update: Today seemed to be a good day for Randy. Medically he is still improving a little bit each day. Still no urine output, yet no dialysis today. Dialysis may happen again (in the next day or so) when he is able to sustain his blood pressure on his own without help from medication (a vasoconstrictor called Levophed). They attempted to wean him off the Levophed today but without a huge success. They will try again tomorrow.

Last night they began to give him TPN (total parenteral nutrition), a nutritional formula that contains nutrients such as salts, glucose, amino acids, lipids and added vitamins.

Randy has been on a heavy sedative called Propofol. It happens to be heavy in lipids or fat content. The large influx of lipids caused his triglycerides to increase and cause a bit of pancreatitis. So today they switched him over to another sedative called Versed.

One of his doctors came in during the day (the surgeon) and spoke with us. Seems that he has had some pretty severe inflammation of his small intestines….The source of which hasn’t been found.

So all in all, he’s having a little progress each day.

Near the end of the day, before Linda left for the day another doc came in. During the discussion we were VERY surprised to hear him say that they may try to wean Randy off of the ventilator in the next day or two and see how he does. If that is successful he won’t need the heavy sedation….his blood pressure will be more able to sustain itself independently, and then dialysis can be done to remove the blood toxins and then the kidneys can begin to function again.

"They had performed a colostomy on Randy trying to find and pinpoint the source of the infection in his belly. They took some stool samples and tissue samples to culture and see what grows. Hopefully by doing that they can use a very specific antibiotic instead of the broad spectrum drugs they are currently using.

He was pretty out of it day. Due to the colostomy Randy was pretty heavily sedated today so we had hardly any interaction with him. Oh well, maybe tomorrow.

During the night they were able to wean Randy off of the Levophed completely (the vasoconstrictor). Now he is maintaining his blood pressure on his own. This will allow them now to give him dialysis. They were planning that for this evening after we left.

They will indeed attempt to wean him off the ventilator in the next day or two. That will be a major accomplishment. We hope fervently for that one!"

"They had performed a colostomy on Randy trying to find and pinpoint the source of the infection in his belly. They took some stool samples and tissue samples to culture and see what grows. Hopefully by doing that they can use a very specific antibiotic instead of the broad spectrum drugs they are currently using.

He was pretty out of it day. Due to the colostomy Randy was pretty heavily sedated today so we had hardly any interaction with him. Oh well, maybe tomorrow.

During the night they were able to wean Randy off of the Levophed completely (the vasoconstrictor). Now he is maintaining his blood pressure on his own. This will allow them now to give him dialysis. They were planning that for this evening after we left.

They will indeed attempt to wean him off the ventilator in the next day or two. That will be a major accomplishment. We hope fervently for that one!"

Господи помилуй!Lord, have mercy!

....praying that Randy has a complete recovery!

Logged

Conquer evil men by your gentle kindness, and make zealous men wonder at your goodness. Put the lover of legality to shame by your compassion. With the afflicted be afflicted in mind. Love all men, but keep distant from all men.—St. Isaac of Syria

Randy was essentially unchanged today. He continues to be on the ventilator and his kidneys are not functioning. However he is totally off of the vasoconstrictor Levophed. Also this afternoon his sedation Versed was turned off. He has not awakened yet from that however. It could be up to two or three days to wake up.

Conquer evil men by your gentle kindness, and make zealous men wonder at your goodness. Put the lover of legality to shame by your compassion. With the afflicted be afflicted in mind. Love all men, but keep distant from all men.—St. Isaac of Syria

"For, by its immensity, the divine substance surpasses every form that our intellect reaches. Thus we are unable to apprehend it by knowing what it is. Yet we are able to have some knowledge of it by knowing what it is not." - St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra gentiles, I, 14.

Two days ago he was totally weaned from the vasoconstrictor (Levophed) andhe is maintaining his blood pressure just fine on his own.Yesterday the sedative was turned off. Unlike the Propofol, Versed islonger acting and has a lingering effect. So today one doc said that itcould linger up to 48 hours. And with his kidneys not functioning and theBUN (a measure of the amount of nitrogen in the blood in the form of urea,and a measurement of renal function. Urea is a substance secreted by theliver, and removed from the blood by the kidneys) level has a tendency tokeep him unconscious too.

They preformed dialysis again today. He was tolerating it well when we leftthe hospital.

This afternoon when the dialysis was to begin, a nurse brought in twomachines. She began hooking up hoses and electrical cords, setting upbottles, etc. The machine began to alarm (loudly). With all this hubbubRandy became more and more agitated. He was moving his head back and forthand lifting his arms. His breathing rate increased. It was obvious that hewas not liking what he was seeing and hearing. And all of this was just theset up of the machinery. He had not been plugged in with his blood yet.The nurse finally did give him a mild sedative (Ativan) which helped him tocalm down a bit.